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Want to get more out of your team?

Having a great team working for you is a key ingredient to building and maintaining a successful business. They represent your business daily and spend many hours working together and so nurturing your team to bring out the best from them will ultimately help improve your business. Is it possible to get more out of your team? Yes, it is! I don’t mean expecting them to work longer hours but finding ways to improve the efficiency and productivity of all the individuals to bring together a smarter, higher performing team.

There are so many aspects that you can think about to help your team and your business do even better. When you are developing your business, do you communicate changes to your team? Keeping your team informed will help them to constantly feel valued within the business and it will reduce uncertainty. Does each team member know what is expected of them and how they fit into the team? If they don’t, it is your responsibility to speak to that person and understand their thoughts – you will need to act upon any positive ideas they may have or train them in specific areas if their skills require developing. Understanding what each employee does and what they contribute to your business will help you to know how well they perform within the whole team and what value they add to your business. From having an improved understanding of your team, you might highlight some areas of on-the-job training or other training courses that will help improve their ability to do the job with more confidence and with greater efficiency and effectiveness.

With the world changing at a rapid pace with technology, trends, seasonality, etc., you should consider the impact that this has on your team. You might need to change the direction of your business from time to time but to do this successfully, you need to have a fully supportive and adaptable team that can respond positively to a new set of goals. You will need to explain the changes and give support to any individuals that might need it to give your business a greater chance of meeting your new goals.

Getting more out of your team will depend to a great extent on areas such as:

motivation

communication

efficiency

productivity

training

enthusiasm

personal and team goals

Identifying an area such as one of those listed above might give you some clues as to how to get more out of your team. However, you need to be prepared to provide support, coaching and training where required if you are to realise your team’s potential. For example, if your team is showing signs of poor motivation, you might decide to arrange some motivational training, which could be in the form of a team building activity. It could also be a social event, either way – a shared activity could help to build your team and help them to work better together with improved communication and understanding for how each person fits in. Not only will it help to improve individual and team motivation and enthusiasm but also give that warm, fuzzy feeling of being an important and valued member of the team.

If you feel that there are some areas of inefficiency within your team, pinpoint where these are and how they might be slowing down productivity. Look at your software products to see if they are helping or hindering your team. Is your internet provision adequate? Are there too many distractions? Is there duplication of tasks? Are there too many steps in the process? Are things clear to the user?

You may have to acknowledge that some individuals are under-performing. You will need to establish how long it has been going on for, what is causing it, and are they able to achieve their targets. You will need to find out if there is any under-lying cause for their performance dip such as personal issues, and see if there is something that you could do to help. Addressing these issues maybe an uncomfortable experience for both of you but it might be the jigsaw piece that helps bring the whole team back to functioning properly again.

At the heart of a good team is a good leader – that means you. You need to demonstrate your own motivation for the business with genuine enthusiasm. If you are spending lots of time attached to your smartphone or complaining about the internet service being too slow then stop and think… how will your colleagues react? Probably by following your example. You should be creating an environment that promotes efficiency and team spirit… the kind of team that you want to join!

Alexanders Business Support in Fleet, Hampshire provide specialist support to companies of all sizes to help them get the best out of their teams and hence become more productive.

Call us today on 07775 804353 to find out how Alexanders Business Support can help you to improve efficiency in the workplace by helping your team work together.